More than a year after agreeing to share power, it would appear that the differences between the MDC and Zanu (PF) are still wider than the Victoria Falls.
From what was obviously a leak from the Zanu (PF) participants to the Herald after the meeting with South African mediators, we now have a clear understanding of the partys strategy which is to portray themselves as the victims of MDCs refusal to honour the GPA. This, of course, is utter poppycock. But with a monopoly of the airwaves and the daily print media in the country, Zanu continues to peddle its lies and half truths with utter impunity.
In the Herald this week, they say that the SADC Maputo meeting agreed that the key issues affecting the GNU were sanctions, pirate radio broadcasts, external interference and the setting up of parallel government structures by the MDC. Those are the issues brought to the table in Maputo by Zanu (PF). The MDCs grievances are then portrayed as other contentious issues that have suddenly ballooned from nowhere and are unimportant. These include the continued presence of Zanu (PF) functionaries in the positions of Governor of the Reserve Bank, Attorney General, governors, ambassadors and permanent secretaries, Mugabes refusal to swear in Roy Bennett as deputy minister, the failure of Zanu (PF) to honour its commitments regarding a national economic council, the land audit and the national security council.
The fact is that these issues were tabled in Maputo by the MDC. And if anybody at the Herald would take the time to read the GPA and the SADC communiqu of January 29, they will find them clearly enunciated in those documents – signed by Mugabe. Zanu (PF) further abuses the columns of the Herald to claim that the South African negotiating team was not impressed by the ballooning of these issues and is supposed to have expressed anxiety that if more issues kept arising there would be no forward movement. They are quite plainly being mischievous here. This is exactly why the pirate radio stations need to keep broadcasting from abroad.
We would be more inclined to believe that the SA mediators would have expressed anxiety about the slow pace of implementing the agreement reached more than a year ago. For Zanu (PF) to claim that they have implemented their part of the deal it just ridiculous and they know it. They also know very well why the personal, targeted measures (not sanctions at all) were imposed on their hierarchy and what they need to do to get them removed. These measures have nothing whatsoever to do with the MDC and neither do the Zimbabwean-owned, foreign-based radio stations. To continue parroting the call for the MDC to do something about these issues is fooling nobody. Not even readers of the Herald.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga